From Logical Argument To Contextual Analysis

As an interdisciplinary issue under the influence of philosophy of science,historical explanation is an important branch of scientific explanation,as well as a core topic of historical theory and philosophy of history.Since the 1940 s,with the proposal of Hempel's covering-law model,this issue has ever occupied a place in the research of analytical philosophy and philosophy of science,and meanwhile,it has played a dominant role in the analytical philosophy of history.The debate of historical explanation is accompanied by the progress from prosperity to decline of logical positivism,combined with discussions in philosophy of action,especially the problem of intentionality,psychological causality,and the debate between free will and determinism,and recently inextricably linked with contemporary cognitive neuroscience.The cross-border application of the covering-law model restimulates the discussion on the heterogeneity between human and natural sciences,leading to the need to identify the legitimacy of all scientific models and methods in historical research.However,due to the transformation of the research path of analytical philosophy and the prominence of narrative turn in philosophy of history,post-analytic philosophy of history and its explanation model have become a new theoretical growth point in philosophy of history.From the perspective of post-analytic and post-positivist philosophy of science,there is no single mode of science,and the concept of scientific unity originates from the metaphysical presupposition of scientism.Similarly,the plurality of scientific methods can better guarantee the empirical basis of science.By critically examining various representative paths of historical explanation models under the post-analytic and post-positivist tradition,this paper makes a systematic study of the contemporary manifestations of causal and rational explanation approaches,and then integrates and sublimates the "truth" component of the post-positivist historical explanation with the core feature of "contextual turn" by revealing the philosophical features of these explanation models and their theoretical dilemmas,which lays a foundation for us to refine the philosophical paradigm of historical explanation from the perspective of contextualism.According to the dominant philosophical paradigm in the debate of historical explanation,the development of historical explanation in the first stage is shaped by the debate about Hempel's covering-law model,but this kind of philosophical discourse obviously comes from the outside of history caused by the cross-border application of philosophy of science.To a certain extent,the development of philosophy of history and historical theory,which are parallel to the debate,is obscured by the methodological argument caused by analytical philosophy of history.With the dilemma of the covering-law model,the attention of the field of philosophy of history has returned to the history itself and various topics about narrative forms contained in historical writing and historiography just become the important intersection of the "linguistic turn" in philosophy of history and the development of philosophy of language in the 20 th century.The revival of narrativism and the emergence of "linguistic turn" in contemporary philosophy of history lead to the replacement of historical explanation by historical narrative(or historical representation)as a new core idea in historical theory and philosophy of history.This transformation in problem domain which is accompanied with the transformation of mainstream discourse of philosophy of history from analytical philosophy of history to narrativism,also has a shaping effect on the study and defense of historical explanation,so that narrative explanation has even become synonymous with historical explanation in the eyes of most contemporary historical philosophers.Moreover,after the rise of narrativism,the analysis of historical explanation is basically connected with historical narrative.In addition to the fact that the theoretical discourse and category of historical explanation have become indistinguishable from the problem of narrative,various theoretical features of historical narrative itself have also become the theoretical basis that contemporary researchers must reconsider when they reflect on historical explanations.Through a critical review of various representative theories and models of narrative explanation,this paper holds that the core of narrative as a formal element lies in integrating historical datum and evidences into a coherent narrative process.Although this formal element is obviously rhetorical and constructive,narrative works on historical events,and context still exerts various constrains and restraints on historical explanations;Therefore,by thoroughly analyzing the contextual reality of historical narrative and the contextual dependency of narrative explanation in nature,it restates the contextual factors and contextual analysis approaches often ignored in contemporary narrative explanation research from the perspective of contextualism.In terms of the rationality and applicability of three mainstream historical explanation models of causality,teleology and narrative respectively,the normative problems of the logical form and scientific status of explanation models in contemporary philosophy of history can only follow a reflexive feature,which can be seen and tested from the practice of historians which presents the concept of essential contextualism.The contextualist historical explanation starts from the constructivity and contextuality of historical facts,revealing that historical events can only be identified on the basis of description;causal analysis and text construction have become the structural elements that must be comprehensively investigated in historical explanation which is obviously not only the investigation of human actions,but also a contextual analysis based on cognition in nature,integrating the context of action explanation and text interpretation into an event-examining context.Following the above research thought,this paper consists of three parts:introduction,five thematic chapters and conclusion.The introduction mainly explains the structure of the paper and the writing approach.Based on the analysis of research status and basic characteristics of historical explanation at home and abroad,the paper examines the background issues,such as the philosophical debate of the mainstream models of historical explanation,the emergence of contextualism in contemporary philosophy of science and philosophy of history,and the early exploration of the contextualist approach of historical explanation,and then focusing on the question of how contextualism intervenes in historical explanation,explains in detail its research idea and basic content and summarizes and states its innovations and deficiencies as well.The paper mainly consists of five chapters: In chapter one,from a broader academic perspective,we reflect on the disciplinary background involved in the nature of historical explanation and the epistemological and metaphysical assumptions contained in the relevant debates,and go deep into the philosophical presupposition level of the topic area of historical explanation from a more comprehensive perspective which is not limited to the thought defensive of debate itself.The second chapter clarifies the new perspective of contemporary historical explanation from two related dimensions: post-analytic and post-positivist transformation in philosophy and "linguistic turn" of philosophy of history.Taking the transformation of analytical philosophy of history as the clue,this chapter deeply analyzes the dilemma of historical explanation and its reasons,and then notes that post-analytic philosophy transcends analytical philosophy,post-positivism abandons positivist dogmas,and narrativism rethinks historical narrative and historical language,providing a new pointcut for the study of historical explanation surpassing Hempel's explanation model.Focusing on post-analytic and post-positivist theories of historical explanation,Chapter three clearly proposes that the theoretical defect of the post-analytic and post-positivist models of historical explanation lies in the absence of a deep understanding of the context sensitivity of explanation,on the basis of critically examining the theoretical forms and philosophical features of the most representative causal and rational models of historical explanation respectively.By contrast,contextual factors are increasingly prominent in historical explanation—context not only provides various background information for the explainer,but also permeates in the whole process of explanation practices.Therefore,the post-analytic and post-positivist theories of historical explanation need to be reconstructed in the framework of contextualism.The fourth chapter continues the investigation of narrative explanation in the first chapter and draw lessons from three theoretical features of historical narrative revealed by contemporary narrativism in the second chapter,so as to abandon the dogmatic concepts of early narrative explanation researchers in the first stage.We explore the theoretical resources of philosophy of history under the post-analytic and post-positivist tradition,and in the light of the uniqueness of narrative explanation,examine the normative issues involved in narrative form as an explanation model.Meanwhile,this paper selects Kuhn's thought of narrative explanation in the theory of contemporary historiography of science as a main case to make a discussion on the level of discipline practice.Thus,from the perspective of meta-theory and sub-discipline practice,it systematically analyzes the problem areas,theoretical innovations and practical objectives of contemporary narrative explanation researches;based on an in-depth analysis of the contextual reality and contextual dependency of narrative explanation,emphasizes and demonstrates the contextualist dimension that is often neglected in contemporary researches on narrative explanation.In the fifth chapter,in virtue of a discussion on the contextualist explanation mode in the philosophy of historiography and sub-disciplines of history after the contextual turn,we provides a normative defense for the nature and explanatory power of contextualist historical explanation under the integrated dimension of theoretical construction and disciplinary practice.In conclusion,we look forward to the research program of "a contextualist historical explanation ",emphasizing the main points of this paper and the possible developing direction of follow-up researches as a sublimation of the whole paper.This part clearly puts forward the internal consistency between contextualism,post-positivist philosophy of history and post-analytic historicism,summarizes the core methodological features of contextualist historical explanation,and tries to make a normative defense for how contextualism can get rid of the relativist tendency and ensure the objectivity of historical explanation.